A Georgia case calling for executive clemency?

How Appealing here spotlights an extraordinary Georgia case.  As explained in this concurrence from the Georgia Supreme Court’s decision not to reconsider the case, the defendant “was convicted of aggravated child molestation based upon an act of oral sodomy performed on him by victim T.C., which was documented on videotape and seems to show that the victim’s participation in the act was voluntary.”  The defendant was 17 at the time of the offense, the victim was 15; under “the aggravated child molestation statute then in effect, Wilson was sentenced to ten years imprisonment without possibility of parole.”   Ten years … yikes!  (For a little context, consider that 10 years in prison is nearly what Enron bad guy Andrew Fastow received.)

The Georgia Legislature thereafter amended the applicable statute to provide that “an act of sodomy is only a misdemeanor when the victim is between 13 and 16 years of age and the convicted person is 18 years of age or younger and is no more than four years older than the victim.”  But, the Georgia Legislature “expressly chose not to allow the provisions of the new amendments to affect persons convicted under the previous version of the statute,” and thus the Georgia Supreme Court decided the defendant was “not entitled to the misdemeanor treatment now accorded to identical behavior under” the revised statute. 

Som the Georgia Legislature has now said that the defendant’s type of behavior should be treated as a misdemeanor, and many studies suggest that the defendant’s behavior is quite common among teenagers even though prosecutions are rare.  Nevertheless, this defendant is still stuck serving 10 years in prison.  Certainly not my idea of “getting lucky,” but rather a case screaming out for the exercise of executive clemency. 

I have a hard time thinking of any reasons why the defendant should remain in prison.  Can readers perhaps help me understand why this case does not involve a far greater injustice than all the hub-bub over lethal injection protocols?  [This paragraph has been tweaked for clarity.]